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When she was little, Chris and I decided to theme Brooke’s room “enchanted forrest”. Seeing as we couldn’t paint (we were renters), I tried my best to come up with creative solutions to theme the bedroom without doing anything permanent. As the centerpiece of B’s room, I came up with this giant tree concept.
Check out how I made a DIY artificial tree for under $40!
Collect all the cardboard and newspaper you can!
Overall, my strategy was to prop up the tube and use packing tape to position the branches as best I could.
Next it was time to paper mache the entire thing.
After letting the entire tree dry completely overnight, I painted it a very dark brown as a base colour. I gave it 2 coats to make sure that no newspaper showed through.
After the base coat of dark brown dried, I did a bit of dry brushing with a lighter brown. This is where the horizontal wrinkling of the newspaper really stood out. Next, I dipped my brush in the light brown paint, wiped the excess on an old towel, and lightly brushed the raised edges on the tree to make the texture stand out.
The last step was to add in the greenery.
Finally, I drilled holes above each branch and inserted plastic vines and flowers that I purchased at the dollar store. Such an inexpensive solution!
We also made sure to anchor the tree to the wall using rope and a hook.
In the end, the total cost for this tree was around $35 dollars. I hope love our DIY artificial tree as much as we did!
